In my previous post about the threatening bills SOPA and PIPA (and no, not Kate’s wild sister), I expressed my concerns over how they could lead to loss of freedom for Americans. Now, I ran across something equally as troubling, but I am quite proud for this person who stood up to the system.

We hear all the time about how trial lawyers (Democrats) should be reigned in and settlements for negligence lowered. But when you look at it on the most basic level, don’t:

trial lawyers=people
Copyright/patent lawyers=corporations

So the real difference in them is who they work for, right? We have a lousy system for identifying Copyright infringement. No proof is needed to send a Cease and Desist letter to someone. At our school, we have had one sent to us for a clearly Copyrighted letter shared on a teacher’s Moodle page, but most times, it is much more gray than that. YouTube handles it the same way–pulling down a video without question, if a takedown notice is issued. Innocent until proven guilty, indeed.

So enter the story about beer. A brewery in San Antonio uses the name Hopasaurus Rex in it’s brewing process. A brewery in Oregon hears about this, and immediately sends a C&D letter, since they have a beer under the same name. Definitely would effect their sales, as a lot of people in San Antonio go to Oregon for BEER!. So what does the San Antonio brewery do? Just cease and move on? No…they reply with the BEST letter ever…and it makes quite a lot of sense. Read it over at: http://www.edibleapple.com/2012/01/13/best-letter-ever-written-to-a-lawyer/ Good for them! Looks like I will need to buy some beer from Freetail!